Local Democratic Rep. Grace Napolitano has introduced a bill that would require transit agencies install protective driver barriers on all buses, draw up plans to ensure bus driver safety and hand over data on operator assaults to the Federal Transit Administration.

Napolitano, D-El Monte, has targeted the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the third-largest public transit entity in the country, for averaging about 130 bus operator assaults every year — a number she called “unthinkable.”

Bus drivers at LA Metro have been spat upon, punched and threatened with weapons, an array of assaults that can either be classified as misdemeanors or felonies depending on the severity of the crime, said Alex Wiggins, Metro’s chief of system security and law enforcement during a phone interview Thursday.

National protection

Napolitano’s bill, co-authored by Rep. John Katko, R-New York and carried by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, was introduced June 6 and would affect thousands of transit agencies and cities in the nation.

“There are major news stories every day of bus drivers being beaten,” she said during a news conference last week in Washington D.C. “They are our friends, they are our neighbors, they are our sisters and brothers. We should protect them.”

Metro bus operator Juan Navarro, demonstrating safety equipment as he closes door with metal bottom and Plexiglass top on a retrofitted bus at the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority on March 20, 2015. (Photo by Walt Mancini/Pasadena Star-News)

One of the requirements is for agencies to install movable barriers that the driver can close to keep away assailants or stop something from being thrown at them, such as hot coffee or urine, according to the bill and union officials in support of the measure. Interviews and records show many local transit agencies have not taken this step.

None of the 550 buses owned by the Orange County Transportation Authority are equipped with driver barriers, said Joel Zlotnik, OCTA spokesman. “No we’ve not done that,” he said.

Omnitrans, which serves the San Bernardino Valley from Montclair to Yucaipa, operates 175 buses a day. None have driver shields, said Nicole Ramos, a spokesperson for Omnitrans.

Mountain Area Regional Transit Authority, which serves rural communities in San Bernardino County, has not had any driver assaults in the past 12 years, said Kathy Hawksford, general manager/CEO and the agency sees no need for barriers. Calls to Riverside Transit Agency were not returned.

Foothill Transit in the San Gabriel Valley is operating 60 new buses since December with driver shields, said spokesperson Felicia Friesema. New buses on order, both CNG and battery electric, will be equipped with driver shields, she added.

Reducing the numbers

She noted that Metro has installed metal and Plexiglas barriers on 1,300 existing buses out of 2,248 buses along 170 routes in the past three years. Wiggins agreed that the agency is retrofitting existing buses powered by compressed natural gas, and that newer, battery-electric buses on order will come with driver shields as a standard.

In 2014, the number of assaults on Metro bus operators reached 141, a jump from the year before, Metro reported. In 2015, the number surged to 170, then dropped to 120 in 2016.

Wiggins estimated 2017 assaults to be around 130, crediting the barriers, added police and sheriff enforcement, on-board video cameras and “driver de-escalation training” as reasons for the decline.

The agency says it takes violence toward their bus operators seriously and is reviewing the bill, but the Metro board has not yet taken a position.

“If an assault occurs when a bus is in motion, or in service, this can pose a deadly threat to operators, passengers on board and the public,” Metro said in a prepared statement.

Costs

In 2015, Metro spent more than $6 million in public taxpayer dollars on compensation claims, the agency reported. Metro also said that sometimes operators did not return to the job after serious assaults.

The bill would provide $25,000 per agency each year from 2019-2023 for barriers, assault defense training, risk reduction programs and for reporting the number of assaults to the FTA’s National Transit Database.

It also asks agencies to rectify blind spots on buses and to design ergonomically correct driver seats.

“They operate in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods largely without protection,” said Andrew Gonzales, spokesman for the Sheet Metal Air Rail Transportation Union, which represents bus operators in Southern California and supports the legislation.

“We are talking about operators getting punched, stabbed, kicked or having hot coffee thrown on them,” he said on Friday. “No one should have to go to work having to worry about being attacked.”

The bill also has the support of the Amalgamated Transit Union, ATU Local 1277 in Los Angeles.

Steve Scauzillo covers environment and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He is married to Karen E. Klein, a former journalist with Los Angeles Daily News, L.A. Times, Bloomberg and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and now vice president of content management for a bank. They have two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. They live in Pasadena. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.